In Friday's column, I offered up a ringing defense of our local custom of referring to our freeways either by their names (the Bayshore, Junipero Serra Freeway, the Nimitz) or by their numbers, without that annoying Southern California habit of inserting a "the."

Around here, we don't say "the 101," or "the 280" or "the 880" or "the 580." They do in SoCal, and there's a growing tendency among Bay Area traffic reporters to do so. Most alarmingly, there's a KRON- TV news show promo spot that refers to "the 101."

I said the creeping "the" was an affront to civilization as we know it, and I was inundated with more than 50 e-mails, most from people ready to weigh in on this righteous cause.

"I have been ranting and raving about this, to no avail, for several years," wrote Les Creelman.

Sally Smith said she found the "the" a "helpful way of spotting immigrant Southlanders."

Yes, particularly since they're not required to wear, like, you know, name badges or something.

Bill Bagnell of San Francisco despairs that the "the" may be too insidious to stop. "It's like stamping out maggots in a garbage dump," he said, winning the award for most explicit simile.

Some of those who agreed that the "the" must be stopped felt just as strongly about something that appears regularly in The Chronicle.

"Please note that an egregious example of this trend is the title of Bill Workman's column, 'Along the El Camino,' " wrote Ralph Spickermann of Redwood City. "Not only does it grate on my native ear, it is grammatically incorrect."

First, it's Bill's column, which makes it his problem, not mine. Bill would argue -- and has -- that it is a local custom to refer to "the El Camino" and, as such, the normal rules of correctness do not apply.

I'm inclined to agree. We're talking about preserving local customs, some of which may be inaccurate, grammatically or linguistically.

Lake Lagunita at Stanford translates as "Lake Little Lake," but no one ever calls it simply "Lagunita."

We refer to South City, Paly, East Paly, and there's a town in Marin we call San Ra-fell, even though it's pronounced Ra-fay-ell.

Then there is the question of how we were first infected with the "the." While most agreed it was brought here by a Southern Californian, some questioned if it started there.

Lawrence S. Lerner of Woodside, a retired professor at Cal State Long Beach, was among those who said the infection started in Britain, where he noticed in the 1950s that people refer to routes as "the M1" or "the A20."

The key to all this seems to be when the reference is to the freeway's number. I don't have a problem with using "the" when it precedes a proper noun, only when it precedes a number.

It's subjective, but isn't it all?

As Stanley Strosser noted, San Francisco has a long history of referring to different points with the "the," as in the Mission, the Richmond, the Sunset, even The City.

On the other hand, Matt Savino said San Francisco's history of calling its bus lines "the 80" or "the 5" may have prevented the "the" from being used at the front of freeway numbers.

Then there were those who thought my concern about the "the" was, well, take your pick -- silly, elitist, ignorant, trivial, archaic and even moronic.

"Hey moron. I'm a lifelong SF and Bay Area resident and we've ALWAYS called it the 101, you jerk. Go back to Nebraska. Sincerely, John Leone."

John probably shouldn't skip those weekly anger-management sessions.

"You are, like, so totally right," wrote Karl Dahlquist. "The 101 should be called by its proper name -- the Ventura Freeway. Or Hollywood Freeway if you are headed downtown. . . . P.S. Keep sending the water. Have to keep the yard green."

Carlye Reynolds, now in Davis, but late of Santa Ana, said, in all seriousness, that it's time to put aside the artificial notions of a distinctive NorCal or SoCal attitude.

"The boom has made those 400 miles not seem so distant any more. California is a meshing of people, not two singular, definitive groups," she wrote.

Michael Jarvis put the final SoCal spin on the whole debate with an e- mail titled, "We're not all surfers, you're not all gay."

Jarvis concluded his message with a to-the-point observation: "If this is what you get paid to do, then you are the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."

Well, there's no arguing with that. A BIG PARADE: It's not the Big Game, so it's a rare time when the Cal marching band and the Stanford meandering band appear together.

But that's just what is happening at today's Fourth of July parade in downtown Redwood City, a grand affair that is among the biggest Independence Day processions west of the Rockies. Combine the uniforms of the two bands and you've got just about every patriotic color covered.

The parade steps off at 10:30 a.m. and, beyond the bands, it will have everything a good parade should have. It's a great way to kick off your Fourth.